Communication Skills Training Program (CST)

The Communication Skills Training (CST) program is designed to promote self-disclosure and empathy in adolescents’ interactions with others. The program is delivered in 16 one-hour sessions of educational and experiential training. Results from an experimental study of CST show that participants experienced short-term and long-term gains in both self-disclosure and empathetic response.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target population: Adolescents

The Communication Skills Training program (CST) consisted of 16 one-hour sessions, administered four times per week, which were designed to provide students with both conceptual knowledge and behavioral practice of self-disclosure and empathy (Avery, Rider, & Haynes-Clements, 1981). The training program, itself, was a structured educational course. Through didactic and experiential training, participants gained relevant conceptual knowledge as well as behavioral practice of both self-disclosure and empathetic response.

EVALUATION(S) OF THE PROGRAM

Evaluated population: 48 students from two Junior English classes in a Southwestern high school. For follow-up analyses, data was collected from 43 of the original 48 adolescents in the experimental (n=22) and control groups (n=21).

Participants were randomly assigned to either the Communication Skills Training program, or to no communication skills-related program. Results of the experimental study show that the CST participants’ levels of self-disclosure and empathetic response were higher than the control group participants’ at both posttest analysis and (despite a slight decrease from the posttest levels) at the 5-month follow-up.